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“No Time to Die” director acknowledges that James Bond was a rapist, and Reddit’s right-wing culture warriors cry foul

Dr. Won’t Tale No For an Answer

We need to talk about James Bond. The debonair master spy and mass seducer of women is looking a lot less charming today than he did back in his glory days in the 1960s and 1970s. As any relatively conscious person who’s watched an older Bond film in recent years can tell you, Bond was less a seducer than a straight up rapist — tricking, blackmailing and sometimes physically forcing women to have sex with him.

But some longtime fans of Bond really don’t want to hear about it. That’s part of why it made such a stir when the director of the upcoming 007 movie No Time to Die recently acknowledged that Bond, James Bond, was a rapist.

“Is it ‘Thunderball’ or ‘Goldfinger’ where, like, basically Sean Connery’s character rapes a woman?” director Cary Fukunaga told one interviewer. “She’s like ‘No, no, no,’ and he’s like, ‘Yes, yes, yes.’ That wouldn’t fly today.”

Actually, Fukunaga is only half right here: Bond didn’t commit sexual assault in Thunderball or Goldfinger; he did so in Thunderball and Goldfinger.

In Thunderball, he forced kisses on a nurse as she fought back, then later follows her into her room against her continued protests. You can guess the rest. Goldfinger was less subtle. Bond threw the memorably named Pussy Galore to the ground in a hay-covered barn loft and forced himself on her, while she actively resisted him (until she decided she was into it — because by the movie’s logic all women want to be raped by 007.).

If you need a refresher, or haven’t seen the movies in the first place, you can watch the scenes here and here.

These are only the most notorious of Bond’s predations; throughout the movie series, especially during the Connery era, Bond seems to grope, slap, or otherwise sexually harass or assault almost every comely woman in his general vicinity.

Watch here to see some of Bond’s least appropriate behavior.

I decided to look on Reddit to see if anyone was talking about Fukunaga’s comments, and I found the most, well, intense discussion in the KotakuInAction subreddit, the home of the site’s Gamergate dead-enders and other right-wing culture warriors. They’re a pretty angry bunch, especially when it comes to pop culture that, in their mind, has gotten too “woke” for its own good.

There are the outright deniers, like the commenter called asterKnight48902 who declares that it “[l]ooks like whoever came up with that is borderline delusional.”

And there are those who consider Bond’s style of, er, seduction to be perfectly ok — and also, somehow, consensual. “Women like sexually aggressive men who murder people,” explains East_Onion. “Get over it.”

“Words mean nothing, as usual,” complains GreenOrkGirl. “Anyone who is not a so[y]boy is a rapist now.”

In another comment, she added

Thanks to modern “feminism” that word lost its meaning. In media you cant distinguish real rape victims (no one cares about them), from “omg he complemented a woman, what a RaPiST!!!

“I can’t wrap my brain around this,” writes Krombopulos-Snake. “So, consensual sex with women trying to kill you is now rape.”

“Women ,though they’re loath to admit it these days, prefer strong agressive men,” asserts 0llygruntt. “Most of the bad boy Chads, that they’re longing for, are of that ilk.”

Another commenter, blaizken_420, complains that “having masculine straight sexuality is considered worse [than murder] now.”

As far as many of the commenters are concerned, talking about the rape scenes as rape scenes is a bigger sin than putting the scenes in the movies in the first place

ForPortal accuses the director and those who think like him of being iconoclasts, in the worst sense of the word,

look[ing] at James Bond the same way the Taliban looks at a Buddha statue – as an affront to their religion that must be destroyed.

Justiceavenger2 declares that

The woke crowds entertainment is ruining established franchises and celebrating it on twitter.

Others talk boycott.

Burningheart1978 declares that Fukunaga’s comment is just “[a]nother reason (not that I needed more ) to give this double woke seven a miss…”

“Ok so that’s the final nail in the Bond coffin huh?” sososomanythrowaways comments, “It was already going poorly a few movies back.”

Some just want Fukunaga cancelled.

“Remove the director,” demands carmachu.

It’s a tad ironic how those who are the loudest opponents of so-called cancel culture are so eager to cancel their ideological foes.

There are, I should add, a handful pf cmmenters in the thread who acknowledge that Bond is basically a psychopathic rapist, like JaredLJohnson, who writes,

In Goldfinger he literally throws Pussy Galore around a barn and then pins her down and physically forces himself onto her until she stops fighting back. In Thunderball he kisses Fiona multiple times as she fights him back and tells him no. In Live And Let Die he stacks the deck against Solitaire who believes in the tarot readings in order to bang her, which probably constitutes rape by deception. In multiple movies he physically assaults women before trying to initiate something sexual with them. You could pick pretty much any Bond from the 90s or earlier and find a sex crime — coercion, sexual assault, date rape — in almost any movie. You fucks can downvote me, but look at any of those scenes and imagine the movie isn’t about Bond and they look an awful lot like sex crimes.

Sure do.

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Elaine The Witch
Elaine The Witch
3 years ago

of course it is a fashion style that many women like because it’s fun, has community around it, and is not suppose to be a sexual style. so of course men started sexualizing it and assuming women wear it for them and their boners.

I Got A Japanese Lolita Fashion Makeover – YouTube

This gal does a better job explaining it then I am if anyone is interested. I just like fashion.

Last edited 3 years ago by Elaine The Witch
Ohlmann
Ohlmann
3 years ago

I don’t think it’s controversial to say rape is worse than murder as long as you acknowledge that murder is already very very bad ?

I mean, anything that make you suffer for years have the potential to be on par with murder IMO.

Moggie
Moggie
3 years ago

I didn’t really get Lolita fashion (the name still makes me uncomfortable) until I saw the Japanese comedy film Kamikaze Girls, and read the book, by the fashion designer Novala Takemoto. A Rococo-obsessed young woman strikes up an unlikely friendship with a biker girl, and hilarity ensues, with Lolita fashion playing a large part. Recommended.

Redsilkphoenix: Jetpack Vixen, Intergalactic Meani
Redsilkphoenix: Jetpack Vixen, Intergalactic Meani
3 years ago

t kind of reminds me of that book that has like the 12 year old girl who is getting raped by her stepfather, but the book is from the stepfather perspective who is all like “I love her and she clearly wanted me by the way she ate a popsicle while crying after her mother died” and now so many people think that book is about a young girl seducing an older man and not a pedophile putting his fantasy on a little girl and convincing himself that she wants him because he gave her a soda pop.

What, you don’t like one of the World’s Greatest Love Stories ever written? What kind of prude are you? /s

Though more seriously, the number of people today who really think that book is a romance involving True Love instead of something a lot more disturbing is, well, disturbing.

Surplus to Requirements
Surplus to Requirements
3 years ago

@Sheila Crosby:

The long numbers that start ES are codes for electronic bank transfers.

So whoever put that graphic together is expecting people to retype all of those long gobbledegook alphanumeric codes in order to use them, and not make one single error?

Yikes.

Plus, no instructions as to where to type them in.

If they couldn’t post hyperlinks for some reason then a QR code would have been second best. Requiring a lot of error-prone manual hoop-jumping is not going to help maximize the number of volunteers one gets in any endeavor. It’s good they’ve now set up a gofundme, since that can be used in the “normal” way without a lot of manual typing and the likelihood that a typo will make the whole thing fail or worse send someone’s money to who-knows-where. And it’s bizarre that that isn’t what was done in the first place.

@Elaine:

of course it is a fashion style that many women like because it’s fun, has community around it, and is not suppose to be a sexual style. so of course men started sexualizing it

AFAICT men will sexualize anything that gets coded feminine.

Alan Robertshaw
Alan Robertshaw
3 years ago

@ redslikphoenix

Though more seriously, the number of people today who really think that book is a romance involving True Love instead of something a lot more disturbing is, well, disturbing.

Yup. Lolita must be second only to 1984 for people missing the point.

weirwoodtreehugger: chief manatee

Those and Fight Club, but it may be based more on the movie than the book.

Threp (formerly Shadowplay)
Threp (formerly Shadowplay)
3 years ago

Those and Fight Club, but it may be based more on the movie than the book.

There’s a book?

I kid, but the number of times I’ve heard that …

In my experience it’s second only to Rosemary’s Baby and First Blood in the number of people who don’t know there’s a novel came first.

Last edited 3 years ago by Threp (formerly Shadowplay)
Elaine The Witch
Elaine The Witch
3 years ago

@Redsilkphoenix

the dude talks about how he wants to get her pregnant with a daughter so he has another child in the age he likes to abuse and then throw out the old one. how does anyone think that’s love?

Alan Robertshaw
Alan Robertshaw
3 years ago

I like to imagine Fight Club as Calvin and Hobbes grown up.

I think they missed a trick in the film by not having Tyler in a tiger striped coat.

Dalillama
Dalillama
3 years ago

The Jungle is a classic in the genre of widely misinterpreted books. “I aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach.”

Surplus to Requirements
Surplus to Requirements
3 years ago

Those and Fight Club

And The Matrix …

occasional reader
occasional reader
3 years ago

> Elaine The Witch
Indeed, the lolita fashion is quite trendy in Japan since before the 2000’s. Maybe other countries too, i do not know.
Problem is that, in Japan, the term “lolita” is heavily linked to another expression : “lolita complex” and more so its shorter version “lolicon”, which is not the fact of liking lolita fashion but being attracted by young girls (and its counterpart is “shôtarô complex” as “shotakon” for attraction for young boys). Pedophilia, in other words. As it is a genre in hentai manga and anime, that is one of the possible explanation of why so many western advocates of pedophilia see themselves as “anime lovers”.
Oh, and let us remember that the “waifu” use of the word trend probably come from a reference to Kimura-sensei in Azumanga Daiô, who is himself a lolicon. The term in itself is not linked to young girl in the manga (but to the real wife of the teacher), but so many assholes use it in this way that i can not stop feeling cringeness each time i hear (or read) it. The term “husbando” also exists but is far less used.

Frey
Frey
3 years ago

LollyPop

[F]rom films sometimes made over FIFTY YEARS AGO. Jesus! Is it so hard to accept culture can move on?

You don’t have to go back into the ancient history of the 1960s.
In Skyfall (which came out in 2012) Bond sneaks up on a woman while she’s in the shower and ‘surprises’ her. She doesn’t even know he’s on the same boat and they first met a few hours before.
 
A bit later when the badguy kills (oh, sorry spoilers) the woman Bond raped, 007 quips “waste of good scotch” because she spilled some as she died.
With “heroes” like this, who needs villains.
 
That movie made me hate Bond movies (I was indifferent to them before) and movie critics (it has 92% on Rotten Tomatoes).

Tovius & Redsilkphoenix

“So, consensual sex with women trying to kill you is now rape.”

I’m faily sure that, if she’s trying to kill you, the sex is not consensual.

Unless that happens to be the kink of both parties, then it’s likely consensual. However, that is something both parties would have to agree to in advance, setting ground rules and stuff like any other kinky encounters need to have before they begin.

Yeah dude, don’t kink shame.

Last edited 3 years ago by Frey
QuantumInc
QuantumInc
3 years ago

James Bond is a sexual conquest fantasy, and the concept of sexual conquest comes from a paradigm that does not recognize “consent” AT ALL. Even with men they don’t really consent to sex, rather they have an uncontrollable sex drive. At best men can develop sexual discipline and hold it back until marriage, though more often if a man doesn’t have sex then others will assume he has failed.
Of course it is worse for women who are assumed to lack any sort of agency. Some women are easier to conquer, some harder, some are worth conquering, some less so. Sometimes it is acknowledged that women have desire, but the way she is supposed to express that is by making things easier, or by being attractive AT him (sometimes when a man is attracted to a woman he assumed she did it intentionally…somehow).
There are other “seduction” scenes in cinema that have similar problems, usually the guy is some sort of “bad boy” type. I don’t have links but feminists have noted that certain scenes in “Bladerunner” and “Star Wars” involve Harrison Ford’s character forcing a kiss on a woman who doesn’t want it. “It’s not rape if there’s a dramatic swell of music!”

Fabe
Fabe
3 years ago

@QuantumInc
Predatory Romance in Harrison Ford Movies

Last edited 3 years ago by Fabe
Redsilkphoenix: Jetpack Vixen, Intergalactic Meani
Redsilkphoenix: Jetpack Vixen, Intergalactic Meani
3 years ago

@Elaine The Witch,

Looking through the TV Tropes page on Lolita, it seems to be a combination of not everyone catching on that Humbert was supposed to be an UNRELIABLE narrator and the fact that he is presented as a witty articulate man. Meaning that all his self justifications for his abusive actions towards his stepdaughter are done in a ‘respectable person’ style of language, and thus he can’t be lying to the reader – or himself – about what he’s really doing to her. If that makes sense.

numerobis
numerobis
3 years ago

Related: LegalEagle’s latest video is about Revenge of the Nerds and how utterly awful it is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BriUmSjKi_w

The antagonist is bad but the protagonist is far, far worse, with a variety of sex crimes that should put him behind bars for decades. He notes how ridiculous it is that this was played for *laughs*. Lots of trigger warnings apply to that “comedy” movie. Also notes how the movie goes straight into incel tropes despite having been made 30 years before the term became common.

Dave
Dave
3 years ago

Related: LegalEagle’s latest video is about Revenge of the Nerds and how utterly awful it is.

I never watched the movie. But one day I overheard my mom complaining about it to someone, so I looked it up on wikipedia, and yeah, it seems to be another paean to rapist incels. Great going 80s. Seems like a swell time to be a young woman then.

Mañuel Laver
Mañuel Laver
2 years ago

I’m reminded of those police officers who react to being told not to murder or violate human rights say that they now can’t do their jobs. I’m more sympathetic to them than I might be because I think that most of them are right—SO FAR AS THEY KNOW. They were taught by the same old boys who taught them the very basic and necessary stuff to do all the bad stuff, too, much as a child might learn from parents not to tough an hot stove and to hate all black people. They don’t know any other way of doing their jobs.

Similarly, men (and women, for that matter) taught a bad version of masculinity and who believe that to be the only possible sort of masculinity will immediately say that not raping au Bond or being less but still obnoxiously* rape-y is suppressing masculinity. They don’t know any other way, and they usually refuse to admit that there _could_ be. (I am grateful that when young I was presented with two masculine ideals, one prized staying indoors and studying every waking hour or, failing that, earning a living, and the other beating-up people and winning games; just as learning two different calendars teaches you that all calendars are constructs built on top of actual phenomena….)

*Is it possible to be unobnoxiously rape-y? You may think differently, but I think that when a sex-partner uncoercedly asks that one play at forcing them with some non-zero but limited amount of force, that is rape-y but not obnoxious. It is rape-y because it would not work for the desiring partner if it weren’t. This requires free and clear communication, and (for one thing) ought to be unambiguously agreed-on while both parties are sober.